House debates

Wednesday, 22 August 2018

Bills

Customs Amendment (Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus Implementation) Bill 2018, Customs Tariff Amendment (Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus Implementation) Bill 2018; Second Reading

1:26 pm

Photo of Josh WilsonJosh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm glad for the opportunity to speak on these two bills, the Customs Amendment (Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus Implementation) Bill 2018 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus Implementation) Bill 2018. They put in place some relatively minor changes that nevertheless facilitate the implementation of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations, also known as PACER or PACER Plus. What I'm going to say is really about PACER Plus because that's the foundation on which these two bills are brought before us.

PACER Plus is a trade and investment agreement between Australia and New Zealand and a number of Pacific island nations. As the former speaker mentioned, those Pacific island nations are important to us. They're our regional neighbours, they're our brothers and sisters in the Pacific, and we have a special relationship with those nations. It's not a relationship that ought to be governed just by economic interests and certainly not by Australia's economic self-interest; it's a relationship that should always take into account the imbalance between Australia and those nations and our responsibility to the people who live in the Pacific and the small Pacific islands. We do have a historic and contemporary responsibility for their wellbeing. I'm not sure exactly how much the PACER Plus agreement has focused on that responsibility. I will outline some thoughts on that.

It's important to notice that, in addition to the standard focus on the tariff reduction within PACER Plus, it does include two less-than-treaty-status agreements on an implementing arrangement for development and economic cooperation and a labour mobility arrangement. It's the labour mobility arrangement that really represents the part of the whole package that the Pacific island nations have a strong interest in. I will come to that a bit later.

In relation to tariffs, PACER Plus will eliminate tariffs on 91.5 per cent of export lines from Australia and New Zealand—what become imports into Pacific island nations. That means that 88.5 per cent of Australian exports will be tariff free into those nations. That's a pretty significant change. On the tariff front, vis-a-vis the Pacific island nations, there's not much change. The Pacific island nations trade amongst themselves on a tariff-free basis, and we don't apply tariffs to their goods. On the tariff front, there's no doubt that this agreement is all about tariff reduction for Australia and certainly not for Pacific island nations.

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